The Cranbrook Academy of Art is a graduate school for architecture, art, and design. It was started in 1932 by George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth. It is part of the Cranbrook Educational Community. The school is located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook gives students MFA or MArch degrees after they complete a two-year program in fields such as graphic design, industrial design, interactive design, architecture, ceramic art, fiber art, metalsmithing, painting, photography, print media, or sculpture. The school is seen as a new way to teach art. Each department is led by an artist-in-residence, who acts as a mentor, advisor, and professor for students in that department. Cranbrook is closely connected to the Arts and Crafts movement in America.
History
In the 1920s, the Booth family started creating a group of public institutions in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. These institutions later became known as the Cranbrook Educational Community. In the spring of 1925, George Booth shared his idea for an arts academy with Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who was teaching Booth’s son, Henry Booth, at the University of Michigan School of Architecture in Ann Arbor. Booth wanted a school focused on the English Arts and Crafts movement, where artists and craftsmen would teach students by showing them how to create things. This movement emphasized that handmade designs should be part of everyday life and work. Cranbrook was meant to be a place where artists lived and worked. The entire Booth family lived at Cranbrook, and Saarinen also involved his family. His wife, Loja Saarinen, led the Weaving and Fiber Department, and their children, Eero Saarinen and Pipsan Saarinen, grew up there and later studied at the academy.
In a series of letters in 1925, Booth and Saarinen planned an educational community with several parts, including a church, a primary school, secondary schools for boys and girls, and an art academy.
Saarinen was the first head of the school. He included design ideas and theories from the Arts and Crafts movement, especially those connected to the international style.
By 1931, artists and craftsmen were already living at Cranbrook, some coming from other countries to be there. Eliel Saarinen was the chairman of the Art Council. Carl Milles left the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm to lead Cranbrook’s Sculpture Department. After the 1930s, modernism became more popular than the Arts and Crafts movement, but the Academy continued to follow its original roots.
In 1983, a major exhibition called Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision 1925–1950 was held in major museums across the United States and Europe. The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art worked together to write a book about the exhibition.
In 1984, The New York Times wrote that "the effect of Cranbrook and its graduates and faculty on the physical environment of this country has been profound… Cranbrook, surely more than any other institution, has a right to think of itself as synonymous with contemporary American design."
From 1971 to 1995, the Design department was co-chaired by Michael McCoy and Katherine McCoy, who were married.
Educational structure
The Cranbrook Academy of Art is a school that only offers graduate-level education. It focuses on professional, studio-based learning. The school is famous for its mentoring approach, where a small group of students—usually 10 to 16 in each class, or about 150 students total across 10 departments—study with one artist-in-residence throughout their program. There are no traditional classes; instead, students learn on their own, guided by the artist-in-residence. Cranbrook is the only remaining example of a unique approach to art education, having lasted longer than the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College.
The school currently offers two degrees: Master of Fine Arts and Master of Architecture. The Master of Architecture degree is for students who already have professional experience and is not approved by the National Architectural Accrediting Board. Cranbrook Art Academy has 11 departments: 2D Design, 3D Design, 4D Design, Architecture, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media, and Sculpture. The newest department, 4D Design, started accepting students in the fall of 2019, led by Carla Diana, a former student of Cranbrook. In 2022, Paul Sacaridiz was named the Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Architecture
The entire campus of the Cranbrook Educational Community was designed by Eliel Saarinen in the style of the Arts and Crafts movement. Every wooden door on campus is unique, an example of Gesamtkunstwerk (total design). Andrew Blauvelt, the director of the Cranbrook Art Museum, described the school as the "most designed environment in the United States that you will ever see."
Alumni
Many well-known artists, architects, and designers have studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art. These include Adela Akers, Olga de Amaral, McArthur Binion, Peter Bohlin, Nick Cave, Niels Diffrient, Charles and Ray Eames, Edward Fella, Gere Kavanaugh, Florence Knoll, Marjorie Kreilick, Jack Lenor Larsen, Donald Lipski, Fumihiko Maki, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Annabeth Rosen, Ruth Adler Schnee, Nancy Skolos, Toshiko Takaezu, Lucille Tenazas, Harry Bertoia, and Anne Wilson.